Photo taken on 11/27/07, in San Francisco, CA, USA Portrait of Sir Winston Churchill. For a 96 Hours story on the "Men in Power" show up at Luscious Garage, 459 Clementina Street, San Francisco. Artist Kellesimone Waits (cq), daughter of musician Tom Waits, hanged a number of paintings in the garage owned by Carolyn Coquillette (cq). The paintings feature a number of powerful national and world leaders and a softer-looking collection of young girls. Photographed November 27, 2007. Chris Stewart / The Chronicle Men in Power, Luscious Garage, Kellesimone Waits Ran on: 11-29-2007
Sir Winston Churchill is among the subjects of artist Kellesimone Waits' exhibition &quo;Men in Power&quo; at the Luscious Garage in San Francisco.

The subjects of painter Kellesimone Waits' exhibition are familiar to anyone who opens a newspaper (or, more likely, clicks on a story): They are the guys in charge, captains of industry, political leaders. Starting with Rupert Murdoch, Waits has created a series of acrylic portraits for a show titled "Men in Power." She's painted presidential candidates Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Fred Thompson, as well as Sir Winston Churchill, among others. She is also showing earlier works of women and children.

Waits' desire was to portray her subjects as something beyond caricatures. "I'm coming from more a social point of view than a political point of view," Waits says. "Looking at the image (of Murdoch), I had a bodily response. It was mostly fear-based.

"As a painter, my first urge was to paint them."

Waits (the daughter of musician Tom Waits and lyricist Kathleen Brennan) says that from the get-go, painting has been her medium. She went to art school, but left. "I've been working on my own for almost three years," she says. "I miss the guidance, but I'm really learning to make my own choices, solve problems on my own." Working at an art gallery in Santa Rosa helps, she says. "I have a community I'm working in, and I have a lot of support in that community."

Before starting "Men in Power," Waits spent two years painting women. "That's what was getting me going - images of women, fashion photography, exploring concepts of feminine beauty and their power." She then moved onto motherhood and children.

But whoever her subject is, her process remains consistent. She pins images that captivate or inspire her on the walls of her studio and works from them. In this case, it was pictures of Giuliani, Murdoch and the like who began to take over her walls. "They really only got bigger as I started painting them, and the images were piling up in my studio," she says. "They're really scary guys. I was happy to see them out of my studio and in the gallery."

While Waits had an instinctual negative reaction to seeing the much-photographed faces of her subjects, she renders them in a rather soft palette; the dominant colors are gray and pink. They have the effect of humanizing the subjects even as her swirls of paint point to strong, verging on violent, feelings. Without resorting to easy symbolism or cliched portrayal, Waits makes the audience recognize the terrifying potential behind those pressed suits.